Toe and the mushroom

This morning we were up and at 'em at 5:30 so Furry Husband could leave for his frisbee tournament...

I was done milking the goats and when I came out of the milk room, I noticed Toe was eating something on the ground... "Whattya got Toe?" I moved him away and it's a mushroom.

Flash back to the drive up for the Cheyenne schooling show and discussion of mutual friend's dog who was acting drunk and collapsing and they thought he was going to die... when they took the dog to the vet... they thought antifreeze poisoning initially but did not find the right things in the bloodwork.

They decided the dog had eaten poisonous mushrooms... and then discussion turned to the friend's son by marriage, who is 18 - and how he's home now after his court ordered stay at a ranch in the middle of nowhere ND to work and stay away from his drug influences here...and the dog may have eaten some of that kid's drugs tho' they thought he was clean... it wasn't determined what the dog ate that caused it to act like that. Was it really poisonous mushrooms or was it something else? (dog gonna be ok? yes, dog gonna be ok)

Now Toe had eaten a mushroom... is it poisonous? I picked up the part he had not eaten. It was maybe 3" in diameter and he'd eaten half.

I came inside and began looking for mushroom id sites on the web. Evidently there are a MILLION types of mushrooms and no really good id site that you could quickly determine if the partial mushroom sitting next to me was poisonous or not.

I found plenty of CO sites saying mushroom poisoning is happening a lot right now in CO because of our wet spring. If your dog has consumed a mushroom, induce vomiting with either syrup or ipecac or 3% hydrogen peroxide and call your vet.

I called our vet - she said he has to puke before it gets into his system. She told me to use the ipecac or 3% hydrogen peroxide...

We don't have either and the nearest store is 30 min away... I called our favorite neighbors. They had the 3% hydrogen peroxide... the vet told me to give it to him in 10cc doses with a syringe and it would make him gag and puke. If I couldn't get him to puke... load his system up with stuff that would coat like milk and watch for vomiting, diarrhea, nervous system issues and that it could really affect his liver and/or kidneys.

We dosed him with 10cc ... nothing.

I dosed him with another 10cc.... nothing.

Great. I have the ONLY dog with a cast iron stomach that will not vomit.

I dosed him a third time.

VOMIT! I've never been so happy to see vomit!

We scooped it up to search for mushroom... there was kibble from his breakfast, which he ate prior to his fungus foray, a piece of grain from his raid of the milk stanchion bowl the goats eat their grain from while being milked - also prior to his mushroom discovery... and there was mushroom.

I can't be sure if it was ALL there? I dosed him 3 more times with the hydrogen peroxide tyring to get a second round of puke. No luck and I began to worry if I could poison him with hydrogen peroxide? I decided to stop and gave him a bowl of milk. Now we wait and watch.

The web said symptoms can occur 30 min to 6 hrs... our vet thought we'd see something tomorrow. Luckily I saw him eating it, remembered the discussion from a few weekends ago and was able to act quickly.

We have the other part of the mushroom in tupperware... hopefully it is NOT a poisonous 'shroom and all of this was just a little exercise in torturing my dog!